The essential goal of temptation from whatever source is simply this: to make myself — how I feel or my time-bound interests and desires — more important to me right now than my friendship with Jesus.
How can we effectively counter this?
Someone has said, “Against Love temptation has no power.” (God At Eventide)
Why is that? Because love and temptation move in opposite directions. Love flows out and is exclusively attentive to how to live day by day, hour by hour, to best help others at all times and under all circumstances. Temptation flows in, looking to stir up our self-serving default mode of being where the flesh says, “how can I fire up pleasure chemicals in my brain right now?” or the world or the devil interject, “what can I do to make sure things go the way I’d like?”
In short, love asks, “what pleases Jesus right now?” Temptation asks, “what pleases me right now?”
Hence, if we are seeking to work with Jesus in the lives of others, we will carry around within us the burning questions, “Jesus, how can I bless this person? How can I help that person?” We will be employing our minds in the service of benefitting others, and leaving no idleness in our mental activity for our self-serving mode of being to seize upon.
In short, if our thoughts are preoccupied with the presence of Jesus and what pleases him, then our lives will be all about love, and temptation will have nothing left of our attention to snag with its self-serving suggestions.
